As Marvel's The Avengers assembly has earned the title as biggest opening weekend of all-time at the box office, an embargo has seemingly been lifted for the film's many visual effects vendors. Further showcasing their contributions to the flick, adding to the lengthy VFX rundown, Method Studios has released the memorable closing sequence in its entirety, while The Third Floor has unveiled photos of the previs, tech-vis, and post-vis stages of their work. And also, FuelVFX has released high-res stills displaying some shots they delivered.
“If I had to add [up] the runtime for the previs in my head, I’d saw we did around 45 minutes,” says
The Third Floor's previs supervisor Nick Markel says. The studio previs’d three key sequences: Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man's face off against each other; the helicarrier attack and Hulk and Thor's standoff following; and the climactic battle where the team battled Loki's invading army.
“When I finished the show, the end sequence was around 26 minutes,” Markel adds.
“The great thing about this film is that this sequence takes place in New York, so we had plenty of reference and a known location to work from.”
“We would prep techvis throughout principal photography,” says techvis-postvis supervisor Gerardo Ramirez.
“We’d do technical diagrams and breakdowns to support the second unit or principal unit with the shoot.” Recalling a climatic explosion during the alien invasion, Ramirez adds,
“The shot was originally previs’d, but the special effects team requested the technical breakdown to see whether the height and speed of the smoke would obstruct the camera view. We gave them a new camera move, new timing for the explosions, and new timing for the characters running through the shot. They rigged the explosions according to the techvis schematic and filmed it, and it looked great.”
“The end battle was the biggest challenge,” Ramirez explains.
“It’s packed with action and there are hardly any moments with just dialog. We spent a good portion of postvis doing shots for that battle. It had so many elements and each character had a moment within the battle. In one epic shot, one camera moves to each of the characters. We had six or seven elements shot on greenscreen to track and tie together to incorporate into one massive camera move. Thankfully, because we did the previs we had a huge library of mocap, and we could re-use a lot of elements we created for previs in postvis.”
Delivering 150 visual effects shots, the Supervisor of
FuelVFX Simon Maddison's work on the movie centered on three sequences that took place in and around Tony Stark's New York penthouse. Fuel designed and created the multiple holograms featured in the scene between Stark, Pepper Potts, and Agent Coulson. Fuel also contributed to the Loki-Thor fight sequence, in which they created a CG exterior of Stark Tower. Check out their photos!
Also
Evil Eye Pictures delivered 200 shots, including almost all of the shots that took place in the wishbone lab, where a majority of the character interaction took place.
“Being able to build complex CG effects shots has given us more flexibility to art direct our work,” cited co-founder and Executive Producer John Jack.
“On The Avengers we were given the opportunity to develop the look for the Helicarrier ‘Atrium’, an entirely CG environment, which is what we were looking for in this project. One of those scenes includes the Lab area with a large bay of windows behind it, looking out over the back of the ship as it’s flying through the clouds. We’ve added an extension of the ship’s body outside the window,” explains Visual Effects Supervisors Dan Rosen.
“We created that series of views, including clouds, skyline, the exterior ship body and hallways with digital doubles seen in the background. We were sharing some assets back and forth with ILM, but we established the night look for this environment.”
The two minute end-title sequence was created by the
Method Design team, as well the custom typeface for
The Avengers main title. The closing sequence was made entirely in CGI, identifying each team members's battle damaged garb with realistic flyby photographs. Method Design's creative Director Steve Viola says,
“Many of the shots in the piece employ complex transitions that proved challenging with varying lenses, scene depths and text positioned in stereo. We were pleased with the resulting sequence, which while CG, is completely believable.” To watch the closing titles sequence in its original quality, hit the below image!
Marvel Studios presents in association with Paramount Pictures “Marvel’s The Avengers”--the super hero team up of a lifetime, featuring iconic Marvel super heroes Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow. When an unexpected enemy emerges that threatens global safety and security, Nick Fury, Director of the international peacekeeping agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D., finds himself in need of a team to pull the world back from the brink of disaster. Spanning the globe, a daring recruitment effort begins.
Starring Robert Downey, Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner and Samuel L. Jackson, & directed by Joss Whedon from a screenplay by Joss Whedon, “Marvel’s The Avengers” is based on the ever-popular Marvel comic book series “The Avengers,” first published in 1963 and a comics institution ever since. Prepare yourself for an exciting event movie, packed with action and spectacular special effects, when “Marvel’s The Avengers” assemble on May 4, 2012. The film is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. In addition to "Marvel's The Avengers," Marvel Studios will release a slate of films based on the Marvel characters including "Iron Man 3" on May 3, 2013!; and “Thor 2” on November 15, 2013.